Festival Review: A Useful Ghost (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)
Plot in a nutshell
When an academic ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan) purchases a vacuum cleaner on account of all the dust in his apartment, he hears the appliance coughing during the night. The service repairman, Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad), comes promptly but instead of fixing the cleaner, recounts a spellbinding ghost tale, in which a woman called Nat (Davika Hoorne) comes back from the dead as a haunted vacuum cleaner in order to be with her husband.
If Terry Gilliam, Wes Anderson and Apichatpong Weerasethakul had a baby, it would be called A Useful Ghost. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s absurd film about a possessed vacuum cleaner digs far deeper than its bizarre premise might suggest. It’s a far out story that touches upon a whole host of themes, including what’s clearly a satirical dissection of Thai politics. The one that resonated the most with me though is the idea of dreams and memories as conduits for remembering the past, something we can’t escape and might as well embrace or it may be the death of us.
The film also glides through as a modern example of queer cinema, with ladyboys, gay sex and backward Thai repression of homosexuality all coming together to push a strong sub-current about the modern way of life for gay people in Thailand. But by far, the most outlandish concept here is the idea of dead people coming back in the form of haunted home appliances. It’s as mad as it sounds. Just wait till you see a vacuum cleaner undressing a man and playing with his nipples with its wand (using the brush nozzle, in case you were wondering) or hoovering the dust from another man’s eyes. Welcome to freaky cinema!
And that’s perhaps the best word to describe this movie - freaky. Love, sex, death, dust, dreams, family dynamics, family businesses, ghosts, memories and even the Bloody Massacre of 2010, when more than 90 innocent people were killed during a military crackdown, are all blended together to create quite an unforgettable cinematic cocktail. Unique Thai sense of humor is also an essential ingredient, which was more hit than miss with me though it does need some getting used to. Once you do, you’ll find many scenes drunk on pure joy and it’ll start rubbing off.
It’s also an ensemble piece, with many characters playing essential roles and making an impression. Standouts for me are Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon), the deadpan mom who has way too much shit to deal with: a son who is in love with a vacuum cleaner, a factory business she inherited from her husband where all the appliances seem to be possessed by poltergeists and a gaggle of elders who she dreams about murdering. And the striking Hoorne plays the ethereal Nat, a ghost who isn’t without her own flaws, beautifully.
The ending did start to lose me, as if Boonbunchachoke lost the thread of his own overly complicated narrative, but then the last few seconds does tie it all together (weirdly, of course). Next to Rose of Nevada, A Useful Ghost is the most brash, unmistakable cinematic movie I’ve see at the LFF. It’ll stay with me for quite some time.